I purchased a Taza chocolate bar because its​ label signals Mexican identity​. “Taza” is Spanish for “cup,” and the product label read “Chocolate Mexicano” and “Cacao Puro.” Much to my chagrin, I later found out Taza Chocolate is not made in Mexico or by Mexicans. It is made in Somerville, Massachusetts, and the ​company’s two white founders​ live in the ​94% white town​ of Scituate, a very affluent community in the state’s South Shore.

Taza’s origin story​ goes: anthropology-degreed Alex Whitmore goes searching for a Mexican food product he can commodify into a corporation. He says he apprenticed with a nameless Oaxacan “molinero (miller)” for an unspecified amount of time (weirdly vague) to learn their “​authentic​” cacao and “​traditional​” grinding technique. I think their story sounds worse than Taza Co. realizes.

Whitmore’s branding scheme is also contributing to the harmful myth that​ ​“all the Indians are dead” so that white people have the right replace them and use their culture​. Meanwhile Mexicans today, even if fully assimilated, are the descendants of the Indigenous people who survived the genocides committed by Europeans.

Considering the facts, it seems Whitmore planned for his corporation to use Mexican identity as a brand to differentiate itself in a flooded chocolate market to maximize profit.

Some say food is a mixing of cultures and therefore appropriation is impossible. This idea ignores the history of colonization in general. Mesoamerican nations did not meld their cuisine with Europeans. Europeans came to the Americas and murdered, raped, spread their diseases, and have continued to extract the resources of Indigenous peoples in the Americas to this day. Europeans that made corporate empires out of selling chocolate are part of the legacy of theft and violence, not cultural exchange.

Taza​ is practicing fair trade​ (at least by today’s hardly moral corporate standards) in its dealings with Latin American and African cacao producers. White Americans behaving minimally decent does not inspire me to praise them. But Taza heavily promoting their fair trade practices feels like a cynical marketing ploy to justify the premium cost of their products to their consumers.

Overall, it seems to me Whitmore is cynically marketing his chocolate as more authentic to the Indigenous Nations of the Americas that invented cacao consumption, to make his fortune.

It also seems Whitmore isn’t stopping at plundering Mexican identity. Taza is currently marketing
Bolivian and Dominican premium chocolate “​origin bars​.” I am certain Taza will expand this practice of leveraging non-white identity to their other African, Latin American, and Caribbean cacao suppliers.

However, if Taza were to reduce it’s slogan to “Mexican Inspired” alone and stopped feigning Mexican identity in their marketing, or if I were to learn Taza corporation publicly advocates for and fights prejudice against undocumented immigrants, ​since the majority are Mexican​, I will change my opinion of Taza Chocolate Corporation.

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Fabian Chavez is a Chicanx writer born and raised in East San Jose CA, currently living in MA, pursuing his English B.A. at UMASS Boston. He tweets from @FabianHorologst.